


Excision, Two Ways

by AliceInKinkland



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/F, Fight Sex, Hate Sex, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-cest, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 15:05:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/pseuds/AliceInKinkland
Summary: The other Nebula comes to Nebula's cell alone, later. She brings no weapons but her body.Nebula lets her approach.





	Excision, Two Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna be honest, I didn’t _love_ Endgame. But I left the theatre wanting this fic in particular to exist, so. Be the angsty self-cest smut you want to see in the world, right?

Failure tastes familiar to Nebula: the seeping shame of it, the lash-out anger, the awful sense of inevitability.

Failure sounds familiar, too: Father's voice, impossibly weary. Disappointed.

“Show me all her memories about the past few days,” he says. “What does she know about the stones?” The other Nebula, her past self, grins and nods, twirling her knife between her fingers. How often has Nebula brandished that twisted smile like a weapon?

How often has she been strung up like she is now? In this very room, even? Suspended, body pulled apart, brain disassembled?

There is no point in dragging this out, although Nebula resists, for a time, out of what feels like habit more than anything. But the awful truth of it is: she cannot stall for time by making Thanos’s job harder, because she is in a different time altogether.

Memories falling out of her as easily as water from a tipped bucket, Nebula looks at her former self studying the scene from the shadows. She watches the other Nebula train her face to blankness, watches her eyes dart between the memory projections and Thanos’s expression. Planning, anticipating.

Nebula is so, so tired.

* * *

Gamora is good at pretending. If Nebula did not know that this Gamora was all set, before Nebula’s arrival from the future, to betray Thanos in a scant few days’ time, she wouldn’t guess it from the way her sister acts. Gamora moves with the same cool efficiency she always did, elegant, deadly.

 _Why didn’t you take me with you_ , thinks Nebula; a stupid, unhelpful thought. Just how stupid is made clear a moment later, when Nebula’s former self shoves her into her cell, tripping her so she stumbles, falls.

The pain of it barely registers, but the old Nebula’s smile is something Nebula thinks she’ll remember for as long as she lives.

Which, to be fair, may not end up being very long at all.

* * *

Nebula’s double comes to her alone, later. She brings no weapons but her body. She slips into the cell like a shadow.

Nebula lets her approach. It is selfish, the way she wants to feel something right now. She should conserve her strength. But when her double delivers a blow, Nebula counters it, and then they’re both up, circling each other warily.

“So,” says her double. She darts in, and Nebula parries the blow, then gasps as her double lands a punch to her stomach. A whirr; a shower of sparks. “You betrayed Father.”

“Yes,” says Nebula. She spins and then ducks, kicking the legs out from under her former self before she can react. The other Nebula falls, then jumps back to her feet. “And you want to as well. Look inside yourself. You don’t have to be a part of this anymore.”

“You’re lucky Father told me not to kill you,” snarls her former self, and she charges, pushing Nebula backwards until she’s pressed against the wall. Nebula knocks the other Nebula’s forearm away from her throat, but then her double’s other hand is there, squeezing. “He didn’t say anything about not hurting you, though.”

Nebula gathers her strength and head-butts her former self, sending her stumbling backwards. “You don’t have to do this,” she says. What are the words she herself would find convincing? She has never been good at this kind of thing.

“No!” says her past self. She kicks once, twice, and knocks the backs of Nebula’s knees, sending her sprawling. “You’re everything I don’t want to be. You’re a cautionary tale. I’m glad I met you, so I can learn what never to become.” She moves to straddle Nebula before she can react.

Nebula stares into the mechanical eyes of her double. Their original eyes were one of the earliest things to go, one of the aspects of their body that Thanos first decreed needed to be augmented. No wonder all they can see is anger.

“Lucky for you,” her double says, “I know just how I want to hurt you, and just how to do it.”

And, pressing one hand against Nebula’s throat, the other Nebula reaches down to undo Nebula’s pants.

Fire warring with cold fury. Shock; the scuffle of resistance. Welcome pain. Nebula desires this, which makes it worse. She has always known how to hurt herself when she really needs it. She has always been intimately familiar with her weaknesses.

The other Nebula’s finger enters her in one stiff and angry motion. Her double’s other hand is still around Nebula's throat. She squeezes harshly, compressing Nebula's trachea, as though to drive home the fact that Nebula is a captive, not a lover.

Nebula's body is responding now, her hips rising to meet her double's punishing fingers. Her double is on top of her, and among the Children of Thanos, hierarchies have always been impossible to ignore. Her double grins wider. Nebula has always wanted to be a wild animal: organic, amoral, all teeth.

Nebula pulls her double's face down to her own gasping mouth. Her throat burns at the continued constriction of her airways, and somewhere in her chest her backup oxygen generator kicks into gear. Their lips met, and she bites down, hard. Her fingers dig against the back of her past self's head, her connection port.

That is a part of her she would dearly like to rip out.

Scuffle, gasp, and Nebula flips them over. She draws oxygen gratefully into her lungs. Her former self is pinned underneath her, and this time when her double enters her with rough fingers she does not pretend it is wholly a punishment, which makes it both better and worse.

Nebula grabs at her former self's clothes, undoing fastenings with desperate urgency. She slips her hand into her double’s familiar pants. Slickness, heat.

Nebula doesn’t really want to make it hurt, but she knows as well as she knows her own mind that the only way her past self will allow this touch is if it remains a fight. So she lets her nails scrape, her fingers push in roughly, before guiding her thumb to the bulb of sensation she knows just how to touch. Her double’s fingers press at the same spot on her. The other Nebula’s eyes are filled with a purity of hatred that Nebula had forgotten about. (This is a lie; she misses that surety every day).

Thrust, rub; a lowered face, a bitten lip. They tustle, rolling over and over in the small cell, locked together by twisted need and horrifyingly simple desire. Hands not buried in each other’s cunts slap flesh and grip soldiered-on appendages, pull and hurt as only the intimacy of selfhood knows how to do.

Nebula comes when she is on top, her hips locking tight, her eyes fluttering shut. The danger of those actions, especially in combination, makes her feel her orgasm everywhere, an electric diffusion, a hot-cold anger. Then her double flips them over and does the same, her head thrown back, mouth wide and wordless. Nebula has never seen her face contorted in pleasure before. She is unsurprised at the ugliness of it.

Afterwards, she tries again. “Let me go,” she says. “Don’t listen to Father.”

Nebula’s double snarls, disengaging from their tangle to spring to her feet. “You disgust me,” she says, doing up her pants. Stepping between Nebula’s still-spread legs, her double presses the sole of her boot against Nebula’s cunt, grinding the leather against Nebula’s over-sensitized folds. Nebula holds herself still, keeps her breathing steady. Makes no sound of pain, or of pleasure.

Her former self steps back, then bends down and spits where her boot was moments before. Nebula feels the warmth of her double’s saliva meet her own wetness, trickling down between her parted folds. Still, she does not move. “I will never be like you,” says her double, opening the cell doors, and then Nebula is alone.

Watching her double’s retreating footsteps, Nebula feels something like compassion, but the sensation is dulled, like a blow to one of her metallic parts. She has never been good at loving herself.

* * *

Still reeling from their journey through time, Nebula and the Gamora she has brought back from the past run, run, as walls and floors and door frames collapse all around them. They need to find the other Nebula before she can bring the gauntlet back to Thanos. And Nebula knows with deep-down certainty what she will have to do if they succeed.

Still, when they finally intercept her, Nebula does try. Tries more convincing words, more pleas. Gamora does too. If things were different, maybe her past self would listen; Nebula did eventually, after all.

But there’s no time, and Nebula has only a few things she does well. Diplomacy is not one of them; neither is changing her mind. And of course, there is the fact that Nebula wants to do what she is about to, just a little bit, wants this particular blood on her hands, where it will feel solid and true: an ending.

Nebula pulls the trigger, and kills everything she used to be.


End file.
